Simon & Garfunkel-"Bridge Over..."
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Topic: Simon & Garfunkel-"Bridge Over..."
Posted By: jimct
Subject: Simon & Garfunkel-"Bridge Over..."
Date Posted: 14 March 2007 at 6:00pm
| Both my commercial and promo 45s for this (both mono) have a listed time of (4:55), but an actual time of (4:52). This now brings it almost exactly to the time of most of the song's CD appearances in the database. |
Replies:
Posted By: Indy500
Date Posted: 17 July 2010 at 1:00pm
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I tried a fold-down on this song from the Sony POP Music '51-'75 CD and it turned out terrible. Instruments just disappeared. That CD was from 1999. Has anyone done a successful fold-down of this song, maybe from the new remasters?
Maybe some earlier masterings were out of phase or something. |
Posted By: Bill Cahill
Date Posted: 17 July 2010 at 7:25pm
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Some of the early mastering on CD of Simon and Garfunkel contains added reverb to cover up the tape drop outs. Columbia had a practice of using a tape dub until it was almost completely worn out, then they made a dub of the worn out dub, and used that dub until it was almost worn out, made another copy, etc etc. By the time CDs came along Columbia was using a dub of a dub of a dub of a dub.. Finally Bob Irwin found the masters in the Sony vault so the later issues are much better.
I believe Collected Works has the extra reverb on it. Anyway that may be some of your problem. |
Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 17 July 2010 at 9:37pm
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That's interesting, Bill. Nothing is noted in the database about that extra reverb. The copy on my computer is taken from my Essential CD, and the sound quality is really good. I can hear some faint crackle on the intro (not vinyl crackle, though), but overall it's pretty darn good for such a quiet recording.
Indy500, I did a fold down of the song from Essential, and I think I know what you mean. This is not a case where instruments are out of phase, though; it's just not one that folds down very nicely. If you listen to the strings at 3:45, you'll notice that they are only in the left channel, while the vocals and drums are centered. When you fold down the audio, the volume of the strings gets cut in half (as does all instrumentation that is panned hard left or right), so they get pretty buried in the mix. Also, the piano sounds like it might have been miked using two microphones. The left and right channels are picking up different sounds from the piano, which is another reason it sounds so much more prominent in stereo than it does when you fold it down. |
Posted By: eriejwg
Date Posted: 17 July 2010 at 10:19pm
| Aaron, I can send you a mp3 vinyl dub I did from a clean 45. To me, the 45 just blows the LP away. |
Posted By: TomDiehl1
Date Posted: 17 July 2010 at 10:34pm
Is that from a vinyl 45 or a styrene 45? I've owned both over the years but had gotten rid of both before I paid attention to such things.... ------------- Live in stereo. |
eriejwg wrote:Posted By: davidclark
Date Posted: 18 July 2010 at 3:45am
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i'd LOVE an mp3 vinyl dub as well, eriejwg. I have recently become VERY
interested in collecting mono 45 versions. So different in sound, so many are! thanks. ------------- dc1 |
Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 18 July 2010 at 6:33am
| John, I'd love to hear what the mono 45 sounds like. Thanks! |
Posted By: eriejwg
Date Posted: 18 July 2010 at 5:32pm
| My 45 is styrene. |
Posted By: Yah Shure
Date Posted: 18 July 2010 at 6:35pm
The 45 blew me away, too, along with my Realistic bookshelf speakers from Radio Shack, which were definitely the weak link my 1969 stereo system. The pronounced bottom-end cacaphony on the "Bridge" mono 45 blew out the woofers time and time again during the two years that I used them. Good thing they came with a lifetime warranty! They've performed much better as plant stands in the ensuing years. :) There is a speed difference between the stereo side of my http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh240/YahShure/SG-BOTWstereoDJ.jpg - DJ 45 and my commercial 45. The Terre Haute stereo DJ runs two seconds faster (4:52) than the Pitman mono commercial 45 (4:54). One of the great things about the mono mix is the definitive climax at the moment when the violins stop playing at the end, followed by the decay. But the extra-helping of reverb on the stereo mix - including the DJ 45's stereo side - completely obliterates the impact of that same moment. |
Posted By: TomDiehl1
Date Posted: 18 July 2010 at 7:03pm
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Many thanks to John for the 45 dub... it's been a long time since I've played the 45.
On a side note, hearing the mono mix again reminds me of my test pressing 45 for Garfunkel's All I Know, which has it's original sleeve with someone's (DJ, label worker, promotion man?) handwriting on it saying "this is the next Bridge Over Troubled Water". The test pressing had the longer "mono" version of the song on both sides, which I thought was pretty cool. ------------- Live in stereo. |
Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 18 July 2010 at 8:58pm
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Thanks to John, I just did a side-by-side comparison of the mono 45 and a fold down of the Essential version. This is one case where I'm going to have to disagree about a drastic difference between the two, even though the 45 is a unique mix. Perhaps earlier copies on CD suffer from extra reverb, but I do not hear any extra reverb on the stereo version. In fact, at the end, it's just the opposite. The 45 has the vocals buried and it sounds far more echo-y than the stereo fold down.
I will also argue that the fold down sounds better than the actual 45, particularly at the end. The strings are cranked up way too loud, practically drowning everything else out. |
Posted By: Roscoe
Date Posted: 19 July 2010 at 11:14am
I tend to agree that the mono BOTW is not a revelation. I do think it's a fine mono mix, but not orders of magnitude different or better than the stereo mix. Still, I'm glad to have it. I believe I did my needledrop from a "Hall of Fame" reissue 45, which was vinyl and not styrene. I have read elsewhere that the HOF 45s pale in comparison to the Columbia originals, but I can never seem to find originals that are in good enough shape for a needledrop. |
Posted By: Yah Shure
Date Posted: 19 July 2010 at 6:00pm
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I always thought the overpowering strings at the end of the song served as the perfect metaphor: that no matter how strong the currents of the troubled water were raging (and nearly drowning him) Art would still be there as that bridge. The dramatically-overpowering strings make me imagine that the bridge is over Niagara Falls instead of Cripple Creek.
Then again, the Niagara Falls tourism bureau may not have seen the potential humor in any "bride over troubled water" typos. So much for going over-the-top... :) In any event, the 45 sounded great on AM radio at the time. But I certainly wouldn't say that the mono 45 is anything like a "mono Sgt. Peppers" compared to the stereo mix. My promo 45 arrived at the college station on January 28, 1970, and the initial HOF reissue on September 30th, meaning that the original BOTW single was available for fewer than eight months. Of course, it sold a boatload during that time, but because of the length and high percentage of styrene pressings, pristine originals can be a tough find. I was prepared to dig out my original stock, DJ and HOF copies to do a needledrop over the weekend, but the real surprise turned out to be a long-forgotten cutout copy I'd bought in 1970. Part of the fun of cutout 45s was that pressings from other regions of the country besides the usual suspects would often turn up. This particular cutout was an east coast http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh240/YahShure/SG-BOTW.jpg - Pitman styrene pressing which I had never played. I captured the virgin spin and it sounded fantastic. The previously-unplayed Terre Haute mono DJ side had more rumble and surface noise. I stopped right there and never even got to the Terre Haute HOF reissue copy. |
Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 19 July 2010 at 7:37pm
I KNEW someone was going to bring that up! I had thought about it myself, even as I was typing my response above. I'm not saying the dislike the mono version, but it's definitely not my preference. I suppose if I had become used to hearing that mix, it probably would be, though. |
Posted By: edtop40
Date Posted: 21 July 2013 at 4:39pm
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i just did an A/B review of simon & garfunkel's song
'bridge over troubled water' and there are very subtle mix differences, but NOT enough to warrant a note in the db......as i usually do, i will chalk this one up to the innate differences between a stereo deliver of the music and a mono delivery of the music....as far as i can tell all the instrumentation are the same on mono mix and stereo mix.......it's just that because of the format, they sound different....i go back to what i always say.....when comparing a stereo version of a song and a mono version....they don't sound anything alike, because of the natural differences in the delivery method... ------------- edtop40 |